I blame Ronald Reagan for a lot - A LOT. Beyond the possibility that the his policies of deregulation and watering down rights for workers and consumers have made us worse off in the long run, he is responsible for some of the most unfortunate US foreign policies not committed by the G.W. Bush administration. In Reagan's divine quest to rid the earth from the tyranny of communism, seemingly unimportant things like state sovereignty and human rights had to be sacrificed. During the 1980s, the battlefield for this battle royale was not in the USSR or anywhere near the Iron Curtain, but rather in Central America.
Specifically, the backwater countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador - countries whose GDP at the time put them in the lowest decile, rivaling countries in Sub-Saharan Africa - were the locuses of Reagan's global war on communism. The former saw a ragtag group of rebels (along with support from the business community) ousting a US-backed dynasty who had ruled for five decades. This group, the FSLN, then held elections in 1984, which were regarded as fair by most countries other than the US. Reagan, undeterred by domestic Nicaraguan sentiments, funded a group known as the Contras to oust the FSLN and make the world safe for capitalism once again. While the FSLN were no angels, they had nothing on the US-financed Contras (see this).
In El Salvador, the group rebelling against the traditional oligarchy - the rebels were known as the FMLN - were never able to gain as much ground as their Nicaraguan counterparts, thanks in part to more direct US funding. Again, while no one's hands are clean in a civil war, the actions of the US-backed El Salvador government is horrifying (see: The Massacre at El Mozote).
Apologies for the banal history lesson, but despite Reagan's best attempts at ousting the forces of evil, I am happy to report that he is ultimately receiving his just desserts. On Saturday, the FMLN candidate in the El Salvador elections emerged victorious, ending 20 years of rule by the right-wing ARENA party. This comes on the heels of Daniel Ortega - the head of the revolutionary Nicaraguan government during the 1980s - being elected president in 2007.
Democracy has vindicated the former enemies of the world, but it was unfortunately purchased at the expense of thousands of innocent lives whose blood is on Reagan's cold dead hands.
